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Nazi super science, or propoganda?


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I picked up a 2 disc DVD set a few months ago at a tag sale titled "Restricted Films of WWII". I just got around to watching it and it's full of the short films they would show at the begining of movies or in certain documentary film types. They're all very real and in grainy B/W. I always watch things like this in hope to spot some neat relatively unkown plane or scheme, ground equipment, or interesting detail.

I hit pay dirt. About halfway through the first disc, it's been interesting, but not 'cool'. Dramatic music cues and the neew chapter title is "German Installations" As I'm half watching as I wait for glue to dry, I hear the narrator...

"An incomplete German Block House near Vatan, France. (About 240Km south of Paris) According to civilians, the nazis hoped to house electrical apparatus to send out beams that would stop aircraft in flight. The structure is 300' long, 200' wide, and some four stories high. Steel doors meant to operate on rollers are 8' thick and 24'-25' high. Allied aircraft pounded the block hous and it's environs with 1000lb bombs."

The film shows a massive block house on/in a hill. The allie troops climbing on it are tiny. Huge place. It's bombed out on one section and giant slabs of concrete with twisted rebarb wire sticking out all over. Then they show the door they mentioned. Wow. Thing is, there's no equipment in any of the shots. Just soldiers climbing on the giant wreck and pointing the giant door out.

That was the jist of the entire block hous blurb, then it was on to a German airfield disguised as a small village.

Now I find this interesting because of the super science bend. The narrator stated it as fact, and the vibe was that it was totally possible and believable the Nazis were going to 'house electrical apparatus' to 'beam' down enemy planes. It's just kinda cool is all. So, does anybody know about this block house? My reality check tells me it may have been set to become a V-1 or V-2 installation, but I could not find any information about it on the net. I also couldn't make out what it would be for. There didn't seem to be any gun ports, or launch rails or platforms. So, Nazi super science hushed by the Allies and buried in Area 51, or just some giant mundane Nazi terror complex? I feel I should be posting this in a loud overly dramatic voice... :woot.gif:

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So, Nazi super science hushed by the Allies and buried in Area 51, or just some giant mundane Nazi terror complex? I feel I should be posting this in a loud overly dramatic voice... :unsure:

Are you asking if some or another agency in the sprawling, mismanaged Nazi empire thought they could build this as a working technology, or that they did? If someone thought they could, that doesn't surprise me at all. It's frequently disappointing for people hunting for the origins of radical ideas "new" to a given era, only to find that the idea wasn't new or radical in that era. Imaginative people have been cooking up all sorts of ideas long before anyone tried them, and we've been hungering after some fantastic technologies for centuries. We're still waiting on that perpetual motion machine, after all.

Did the Nazis expend all sorts of resources in efforts to chase such ideas, however radical? Sure, we all did, then. By World War II, faith in science and it's application to engineering was reaching it's mid-twentieth century zenith. Governments supported science and emerging technologies with the assumption that even basic research was worthwhile, and a good thing. After three decades, or so, the backlash came, as people came to question the drawbacks, side effects, possible moral problems, credibility, and so forth, of science research, education, development, and policy.

Edited by Fishwelding
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I was being funny. I am of the belief it was a V-1/V-2 block house, I just couldn't find any information on it for certain. The super science bend was just too cool. It makes you wonder if some Nazi scientist pulled a 'Mythbusters' and got the approval from a General for some super science 'electrical apparatus' that would'beam' down enemy aircraft. Or did some retreating Nazi soldier make it up and told the civilians a wild tale as he retreated?

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It makes you wonder if some Nazi scientist pulled a 'Mythbusters' and got the approval from a General for some super science 'electrical apparatus' that would'beam' down enemy aircraft. Or did some retreating Nazi soldier make it up and told the civilians a wild tale as he retreated?

Read Guderian's commentary about Hitler and tank designs. I'm continually amazed at the popular worship of the technological prowess of the Third Reich by history buffs. It's not that the Germans weren't capable engineers. It was that Nazi leadership, in addition to their obvious criminalities, were incidentally spectacularly wasteful of technological opportunity. That, and not simply being outnumbered, is why the Luftwaffe were fugitives in their own airspace while the Army and the SS fought the rest of the war dodging allied attack aircraft.

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I'm reading Doolittle's autobiography and he mentions German technical "superiority" and how it came about, to wit, Die Reichsministrium had no problem spending money on fundamental research before and during the war.

I guess it was that step between invention and application with which they had trouble.

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Ironically the British WW2 Radar systems was invented after the air ministry started a competition to make an electromagnetic 'death ray' that could kill a sheep at 180 yards.

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Ironically the British WW2 Radar systems was invented after the air ministry started a competition to make an electromagnetic 'death ray' that could kill a sheep at 180 yards.

Did the Air Ministry have some kind of a vendetta against sheep? :thumbsup:

Mike

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it's lost in history now , but some of the secret stuff was indeed intrigueing

science fiction it may have been but a lot of stuff considdered science fiction centuries ago is now everyday stuff

how many people must have laughed like drains at da vinchi with his helicoper design ( he probably said " one day people will fly in these !" )

which gives rise to this !! the bell may this have been part of a bigger project ?? it was unrecorded what its actual purpose was !!

it depends how you view a beam to stop something !! the correct electrical pulses could in theory interfere with electronic systems therefore rendering most machines useless

i frequent urban exploration sites ( it is amazing what we have before you even get to the ww2 germans )

one of the reports in a search for nuclear instalations braught up an underground instalation in the uk that still keeps steam trains servicable in the event nuclear war ever knocks out locomotives dependant on electrics

as nuclear weapons pulses knock out electronics too

anyway this site should prove fascinating to most on here urban exploration

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Was the bunker like this one? This is the Eperlecques blockhouse near Watten, not far from Calais.

peebeep

I`ve been there, it really is as big as it looks, very imposing.

I think the Canadians took it (IIRC) and the wall is littered with pock marks where even heavy arty was just bouncing off the structure.

Then there was `The Cupola`

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/wizernes.html

Another of Hitler`s highly engineered projects that proved to be folly, victim of `Tallboy` bombs dropped by RAF Lancs and conventional USAAF attacks.

Cheers, Ian

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